I was in the Army in the 80s, near the end but still during the Cold War. We were still training with the Soviets as the presumptive adversaries.
So one time I was home on leave visiting my family. I was out late with friends and came back in the wee hours to find the front door locked; with no key, I just curled up on the front porch and went to sleep.
I was awoken by an explosion: the sound filled the air and kept roaring. It was still night, but over the houses in the direction of The Big City dad's house was close to, the sky was bright as daylight. I panicked and banged on the door - I was certain The City had been nuked, and WWIII had started.
Turns out, there's an Air Force base at The City, and sometimes the jets took off and used their afterburners, which made that loud percussive roaring sound that could be heard for miles. The light I saw was... just light pollution from The City. I wasn't used to that much light pollution, and waking up from a dead sleep to it, my brain didn't process it.
While I didn't quite soil my pants, the incident scared me more than I think anything else has in my life, before or since. I think, with Putin's efforts over the past decade to resurrect the Soviet empire, I've been low-key expecting a nuclear incident, which is almost impossible to not have escalate.
Escalations at the Eastern borders of Western Europe alarm me more than anything else. If India and China start posturing, that'd be worse, probably. But it's the cycle that makes this concerning, and the fact that so many Americans seem to have forgotten why our (great-)grand-parents fought WWII, and are embracing and defending fascism, deflates me.
So maybe a little joking there? But mostly just defeatist. If someone like Trump can get elected, and has a serious chance of re-election; if our supreme court is partisan and has clearly corrupt members; I don't know. What do you think?